The present invention relates to an electronic print board system comprising a means for optically reading erasable images written or drawn upon a drawing sheet, and for subsequently printing out the image.
Various types of electronic print board systems similar to the present invention have been developed in the past, such as the system shown in FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the control system of a conventional electronic print board system shown in laid-open Japanese Patent Application No. 171695/1984.
This figure shows an endless band drawing sheet 1 supported by a pair of spaced-apart rollers, a conveyer drive 2 for driving the drawing sheet 1, and a lamp 3 for illuminating the rollers supporting the drawing sheet 1.
The figure also shows a mirror 4 for chaanging the light from the drawing sheet 1 to a lens 5. The lens 5 focuses the light reflected from the mirror 4, onto an image sensor 6 which senses the received focused light and thereby optically reads the image from the drawing sheet 1.
Also shown in the figure is a controller 7 for controlling the entire electronic print board system, a memory 8 for storing the image data, a recording paper supplier 9 for supplying a recording paper 10 to a printer 11 for printing the images of the drawing sheet 1 detected by the sensor 6 on the recording paper 10 supplied by the supplier 9, and an operation panel 12 for giving instructions such as for printing, etc.
The operation of a conventional electronic print board system is described below.
To print an image that has been manually drawn on the drawing sheet 1, the operator first writes or draws something on the drawing sheet 1, then inputs a print command using the operation panel 12, whereby the conveyor drive 2 conveys one screen of the drawing sheet 1 past the lamp 3 which illuminates it.
The light reflected from the drawing sheet 1 is redirected by the mirror 4, then passes through the lens 5 which focuses it toward the image sensor 6 that reads it as image data.
The image data are then sent via the controller 7 to the printer 11 which prints images corresponding to the image data fromm the drawing sheet 1 onto the recording paper 10 fed by the recording paper supplier 9.
When it is necessary to print the image onto several sheets of recording paper 10, a command can be input via the operation panel 12 to store the image data in the memory 8 and then to sequentially print the stored image data onto several sheets of the recording paper 10.
However, the conventional electronic print board system configured as described above prints only images which have been written or drawn onto the drawing sheet 1. This means that in which applications such as conferences, in the need arises to study one sheet of reference material, revise the reference material, and to distribute copies to everyone at the conference, the new material must be entirely rewritten and/or redrawn on the drawing sheet 1, or the revised material must be printed onto the required number of sheets of recording paper by a photocopier or the like.
This process interferes with the progress of the conference and does not take full advantage of the electronic print board system's features.